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Asia-Pacific and the Middle East IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks 2026/2027—IT Budget and Cost Key Metrics by Region and Company Size
Preparing a benchmark for IT spending or IT employee staffing levels can be a difficult exercise for any business. Our Asia-Pacific and the Middle East IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks study makes the job easier by providing an IT spending framework with hundreds of ratios, statistics, and other IT cost metrics for strategic IT budget analytics. IT spending as a percentage of revenue and dozens of other IT budget ratios are provided by region and company size.
In this inaugural report, we provide IT budgetary benchmarks and IT staffing metrics by region and organizational size for private and public companies and for governmental organizations, based on our in-depth survey of over 75 information technology executives.
As the APAC and Middle East regions are very large and diverse, we begin the study by concentrating on three specific regions: Australia and New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, and the Middle East .
This study is designed to work with our IT Spending and Staffing study. Rather to give significant sector breakdowns, it is designed to identify any major cultural or economic differences between regions. Since the companies in this study are global and multinational, they face many of the same decisions as companies throughout the world while deploying the same technologies. While there are some differences, combining the insights from this report and our main study should allow companies in these regions to be confident in benchmarking their IT spending.
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INTENDED AUDIENCE
For CIOs and consulting firms, this 8-chapter study provides key metrics and unbiased data for you to aid in benchmarking an organization’s total IT spending and staffing levels. Combining this study along with the sector chapters of our main report will allow you to achieve the following outcomes:
- Benchmark your IT operational spending levels. Compare them with those of organizations of similar size within your geographical region. Over 20 specific IT cost management ratios and other IT support metrics are provided, such as IT budget as a percent of revenue and IT budget per employee/user, allowing IT executives to highlight opportunities to reduce IT costs, optimize IT expenses, and improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and governance of the IT organization.
- Measure your IT capital budget spend levels. Nearly 20 specific IT capital budget metrics are provided to help stakeholders monitor IT investment levels relative to competitors.
- Manage your IT staffing levels. Over 30 IT head count ratios are provided for benchmarking IT staff counts, measuring IT worker productivity, and achieving efficiency within the IT department.
- Evaluate your IT key performance indicators (KPIs). Compare your IT intensity and infrastructure metrics with your peers, using measures such as percentage of the IT budget spending for running, growing, and transforming the business, custom/commercial software mix, users per network site and per printer, PCs per user, percentage of users with smartphones, data center OS mix, virtualization levels, outsourcing and managed services spending levels, use of cloud services, and other KPIs – all important factors in budgeting for IT.
For providers of IT products and services, this study provides valuable insights into the current IT budgeting priorities of corporate buyers and changes in levels of IT operational and capital spending. This study provides objective data based on our in-depth survey of IT decision makers. As such, it can be a valuable source of IT spending statistics to validate assumptions underlying IT solution provider business strategy, capabilities and competitive analysis, pricing strategies, and sales processes.
KEY METRICS DESCRIPTIONS
This section lists all the key metrics provided in the full report. All key metrics listed appear in all chapters.
Demographics
In section 1, we describe the key characteristics of the sample to establish a basis for comparison with other IT organizations. These key metrics are as follows:
- Organization size demographics, including revenue, employees, revenue per employee, and revenue per user
- IT spending demographics, including total IT spending, IT capital spending, and IT outsourcing budget
- IT infrastructure demographics, including number of data centers, network sites, and business applications, and ERP systems.
- Key metrics of IT intensity, including ratio of users to employees, PCs per user, percentage of users with tablets, percentage of users with smartphones, users per network site, and percentage of application functionality from custom systems
- Percentage of IT budget spending for running, growing, and transforming the business
IT Spending Allocated to Outsourcing
In section 2, we provide IT spending benchmarks by type of spending. These key metrics not only provide additional demographic information but also identify IT trends. They include:
- Outsourcing as percentage of IT budget
- Outsourcing allocations for managed services, cloud infrastructure, and consulting
- Cloud/subscription software as a percentage of application portfolio
IT Planning and Budgeting Priorities
In section 3, we examine key budget priorities for IT organizations. These key metrics include:
- Net Trend for Spending by IT Initiative. Spending priorities by budget area, showing the net percentage of organizations planning to increase spending: artificial intelligence, data analytics/business intelligence, legacy systems, disaster recovery/business continuity, data center automation, blockchain, IoT advanced networking, metaverse and VR/AR.
- The importance of lowering costs vs. improving service levels in the coming year
Total IT Spending Metrics
Section 4 presents key metrics for IT spending, which includes current-year IT operational and capital spending, but excludes depreciation. These key metrics include:
- Total IT spending as a percentage of revenue
- Total IT spending per user
- Total IT spending per PC
- Budget categories as average percentage of total IT spending, including spending on personnel, business applications, data center hardware/software, energy/utilities, IT facilities/floor space, cloud infrastructure, network infrastructure, IT security, voice/data carrier expenses, PCs/end-user devices, printers/printing, artificial intelligence, and other expenses
IT Operational Spending Metrics
Section 5 presents key metrics for IT operational spending. These key metrics are as follows:
- IT operational spending as a percentage of revenue
- Percentage of organizations decreasing, maintaining, or increasing IT operational spending year over year
- IT operational budget percentage change from previous year
- Adequacy of current IT operational budget to support the business
- IT operational spending per user
- IT operational spending per PC
- Percentage of IT operational budget charged back to business units
- Budget categories as average percentage of IT operational spending, including spending on personnel, business applications, data center hardware/software, energy/utilities, IT facilities/floor space, cloud infrastructure, network infrastructure, IT security, voice/data carrier fees, PCs/end-user devices, printers/printing, artificial intelligence, and other expenses
- Personnel as a percentage of IT operational spending at the 25th percentile, median, and 75th percentile
- Depreciation as a percentage of IT operational budget
IT Operational Spending Outside the IT Budget
Section 6 provides an analysis of spending that occurs outside of the IT budget and a definition for non-IT spending that sometimes appears in the IT budget.
IT Operational Spending per Tower
Section 7 provides an analysis on IT operational spending per tower. These towers are aligned with the Technology Business Management (TBM) taxonomy. Metrics include the percentage of IT operational spending in the IT management tower, business applications tower, data center tower, network tower, end-user tower, security and compliance tower, and delivery tower.
Capital Spending Metrics
Section 8 provides an analysis of IT capital spending, including:
- Percentage of organizations decreasing, maintaining, or increasing IT capital spending
- IT capital budget change from prior year
- IT capital budget as a percentage of total IT budget
- Budget categories as average percentage of IT capital spending, including spending on personnel, business applications, data center hardware/software, energy/utilities, IT facilities/floor space, cloud infrastructure, network infrastructure, IT security, voice/data carrier fees, PCs/end-user devices, printers/printing, artificial intelligence, and other expenses
IT Staffing Metrics
In section 9, we provide key metrics and trend data on IT staffing, including:
- Users per IT staff member
- Percentage of organizations increasing, maintaining, and decreasing IT staff levels from previous year
- IT staff head count change from prior year
- IT staff turnover
- Annual training allocation per IT employee
- Contingency workers as percentage of IT staff
- IT staff functions as average percentage of IT staff, including IT managers, IT finance/vendor management/procurement, project management, clerical/administrative support, application developers, business analysts, data management, quality assurance/testing, DevOps engineers, database administration, server support, network support, communications support, web/e-commerce, IT security, help desk (service desk), desktop support, documentation/training/process and standards, and other functions
Job Function Metrics
In section 10, we provide key benchmarks for seven job functions:
- IT managers as a percentage of IT staff
- OS instances per server support staff member
- Network devices per network support staff member
- Applications per application developer
- PCs per desktop support staff member
- Users per help desk staff member
- Help desk tickets per end-user support staff member per year
Business Application Metrics
Section 11 provides business application metrics, including:
- Business application spending as percentage of IT operational spending
- Business application operational spending per user
Data Center Metrics
Section 12 covers these data center spending and infrastructure metrics:
- Processing workload by operating system, including IBM mainframe, Unix, Linux, IBM i (OS/400), Windows Server, and other
- Percentage of processing workloads by location: on-premises/data center, managed services providers, and public cloud
- Consolidated data center spending per user
- Consolidated data center spending per physical server
- Data center hardware/software spending as a percentage of IT spending
- Data center hardware/software spending per user
- Energy/utilities as a percentage of IT spending
- Energy/utilities spending per user
- Energy/utilities spending per physical server
- Cloud infrastructure services as a percentage of data center spending
- IT facilities/floor space as a percentage of IT spending
- IT facilities/floor space spending per user
- OS instances per physical server
- Users per physical server
Network Metrics
Section 13 covers the following network metrics:
- Consolidated network spending per user
- Network infrastructure as a percentage of IT spending
- Network infrastructure spending per user
- Network spending per network site
- IT security as a percentage of IT spending
- IT security spending per user
- Data/voice carrier spending as a percentage of IT spending
- Data/voice carrier spending per user
End-User Computing Metrics
Section 14 covers the following end-user metrics:
- Consolidated end-user technology spending per user
- PCs/end-user device spending per user
- PCs/end-user devices as a percentage of IT spending
- Printer/printing as a percentage of IT spending
- Printer/printing spending per user
- Users per printer
As noted above, in each chapter, the section on total IT spending and the section on IT operational budgets include a detailed analysis of IT budget line items as a percentage of the total. Line items include IT personnel, business applications, data center hardware/software, energy/utilities, IT facilities/floor space, cloud infrastructure, network infrastructure, IT security, voice/data carrier expenses, PCs/end-user devices, printers/printing, artificial intelligence, and other.
APAC-GCC CHAPTER DESCRIPTIONS
Chapter 1: Executive Summary (Free Download)
This chapter provides an overview of the key findings from the full study and describes the contents of the subsequent chapters. It also includes information on the study participants and the survey methodology.
- IT operational budget change from prior year
- Net percent increasing IT operational spending
- IT operational spending growth by organization size
- Adequacy of current IT operational budget to support the business
- Total IT spending as percentage of revenue
- IT operational spending per user
- Change in IT operational budgets from prior year
- Percentage of organizations changing IT capital spending
- Capital budget as a percentage of IT spending
- Spending priorities by IT initiative
- Historical cloud subscription rates
- Percentage of IT budget spending for running, growing, and transforming the business
- Percentage of organizations changing IT staff head count
Chapter 2: Composite Benchmarks
This chapter provides composite metrics for all survey respondents across all regions and organization sizes. The sample includes 76 organizations and is stratified by size and region as described in the survey methodology section. Respondents must have at least $50 million in annual revenue or IT spending greater than $1 million, and maintain at least some operations in APAC or the GCC. There is no upper limit on the size of survey respondents.
Chapters 3A, 3B, and 3C: Benchmarks by Organization Size
In these chapters, we provide a complete set of benchmarks for organizations within the specified size classification. Midsize organizations benchmarks are in Chapter 3A, large organizations in Chapter 3B, and very large organizations in Chapter 3C. There are 26 respondents in the midsize organization sample, 28 in the large sample, and 20 in the very large sample. We define the size categories as follows:
- Midsize organizations have IT operational budgets of less than $100 million.
- Large organizations have IT operation budgets of $100 million to less than $500 million
- Very large organizations have IT operational budgets of $500 million or greater.
To avoid the problem of having very small organizations in our sample, we have excluded respondents with less than $50 million in annual revenue.
To facilitate common definitions for IT cost data, we continue to align our metrics with the Technology Business Management (TBM) taxonomy. For more information, visit the TBM Council’s community website.
Chapter 4: Australia and New Zealand Composite Benchmarks
Chapter 4 provides composite metrics for organizations operating in Australia and New Zealand. This chapter reflects the unique business environment of the region, which is shaped by a combination of advanced economies, relatively small domestic markets, strong regulatory standards, and robust ties to Asia-Pacific supply chains. The 26 respondents in this sample range in size from a minimum of about $500 million to over $45 billion in annual revenue. They include fast growing midmarket firms to some of the region’s largest enterprises across multiple industries.
Chapter 5: Japan and South Korea Composite Benchmarks
Chapter 5 provides composite metrics for organizations operating in Japan and South Korea. These advanced industrial economies share a strong foundation in manufacturing, technology, and export-driven industries, while also facing demographic constraints and rapid shifts in global supply chains. The 25 respondents in this sample range in size from a minimum of about $500 million to over $300 billion in annual revenue. They represent a broad mix of enterprise sizes, from midmarket firms to some of the largest global players headquartered in the region.
Chapter 6: The Middle East Composite Benchmarks
Chapter 6 provides composite metrics for organizations across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The 25 respondents in this sample range in size from a minimum of about $70 million to over $445 billion in annual revenue.
IT SPENDING AND STAFFING BENCHMARKING CONSULTING
Avasant Research not only publishes benchmarking metrics. We are also the leading provider of IT spending and staffing benchmarking services.
Looking for expert assistance in evaluating your IT spending and staffing levels or budgeting for IT? Our custom benchmarking consulting service provides an in-depth assessment of your organization’s IT spend ratios, comparing your key metrics against our database of peer organizations.
Contact us for pricing and a free sample of the benchmarking deliverable.
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Akshay Khanna
PARTNER, AVASANT
